How to Empower Your Team To Use AI This Tax Season

Today's Topic: How to Empower Your Team To Use AI This Tax Season

Automation is a mindset.

It's a mindset of searching for opportunities to make your life easier. It's also the mindset that every very successful business owner has.

Every person at your company should be thinking how their role can be made easier with automation. It's your job to bring that mindset to your team.

By that I mean building a culture where everyone wants to try new systems. Where everyone is exploring ways to make themselves more efficient. It's hard to find new talent nowadays - so focus on making your current staff more efficient.

Obviously, easier said than done. Change, no matter how small, is never easy. So today I want to break down what I've seen successful practice owners do to manage AI changes in their team.

#1: Start with context.

Transparency comes first. Explain to your team what you've found. Where you think automation can help them. And what goals you are trying to achieve. Invite them to give their input on making the decision.

Make it clear that you don't want to replace your staff. You want to augment them.

As the leader of the practice, change starts with you. Lead by example: be the first using new systems if you want others to do so.

#2: Involve your team early in testing & evaluating tools

Once you've identified a process you want to automate, there's probably different tools out there to choose from. Bring your team in this decision process. Since they're the ones using the new systems, their preferences matter.

Usually firms start with a pilot, free trial, or experiment before rolling big changes out.

#3: Invest in training

Once you've tested a tool that checks all the boxes, and you're ready to move forward, make sure to invest in training. That can mean different things:

• A 5-min Loom instructional video showing how to use the new system
• Having quick 1:1 calls with each person on your team
• Sharing longer courses or FAQs or guidebooks or YouTube videos on new tools that are more involved

They key here is to over-communicate, just like with your clients.

They say you have to invest in new tech to change management in a 1:5 ratio.

That means every new system you introduce, you have to go 5 times as hard on making sure your team knows why they should use it, how to use it, and support them in the process.

#4: Policies & SOPs

OK, I'll be honest. I'm not a fan of policies and SOPs. I don't think anyone is. I try to remove as many restrictions from my team as possible, so they can focus on doing their best work

If you find that you need policies for every little thing, you might need to consider new hires.

However, I've seen a found common areas where simple policies can make a huge difference:

• Adding a section in your contract with your clients about the use of AI
• Make sure your team is not using ChatGPT free and turns off data sharing. Have everyone use your team plan for tax work
• Make sure your team is using high quality prompts (as copied in your prompt repo, for example) to ensure high quality, accurate results
• Always have a human double-check AI-generated results before sending to your client

The one thing you want to avoid is a lack of clarity. Your team should know where you stand on AI use in your practice.

#5: Empower your team to find use cases

Your team has their boots on the ground - encourage them to look at their own tasks on a typical workday and explore how AI can be used to make those jobs easier.

Maybe open up a new Slack channel for feedback and ideas on automations.

And if they now complete their job way faster than before, give them a raise and give them higher level work like advising clients or growing the firm.

#6: Celebrate wins and take responsibility for failures

As the leader, if your team successfully uses AI or automation - give them props in front of everyone.

On the flip side, if something goes wrong as you're experimenting with these new systems, take responsibility for it. And learn from it for next time. You're innovating, after all. It doesn't come easy.

#7: Consider openness to AI & automation when hiring

None of this will work when your team is just living under a rock. If they're not willing to change their ways at all, you might have to find someone else.

It's a fast changing world. We all have to keep up in it.

They say AI won't replace us, but the ones who use AI will. That's something to post in your next firm-wide update :)

P.S. this email series is by CleanUpBuddy.ai, which helps you turn a tangle of bank statements into a clean P&L in under a minute using AI.

It's great for those Schedule C clients without clean books. You know who I'm talking about. Feel free to check out our site to see how we can help you reclaim hours of manual work this tax rush without outsourcing or hiring.

We also invite you to join our Discourse community for other bookkeepers & tax pros using CleanUpBuddy here. We'll add more content there as well as announce events, special promos, and more.

Thanks for tuning in, happy to help with any questions. Just drop a reply.

Touch base next week,

~Toni, CEO of CleanUpBuddy.ai